Dramatic climate change as a result of global warming could happen in a single lifetime – instead of being a slow process evolving over centuries, according to a University of Ulster academic.
Professor Marshall McCabe of the School of Environmental Sciences said that given the right set of circumstances, “a climate can flip in a lifetime”. And the result could be the return of Arctic conditions last seen in the British Isles thousands of years ago.
He said that the North Atlantic
People on the move will soon be able to access TV programmes and the internet on dual mode mobile phones, thanks to a highly praised, cross European project made possible by a grant of €3.71 million from the Information Society Technology (IST) Programme of the European Union’s Fifth Framework Programme (FP5).
With project partners in the UK, Germany, France and Italy, the CISMUNDUS (Convergence of IP-based Services for Mobile Users and Networks in DVB-T) project has developed and demonstrat
Quasars are the most brilliant of cosmic fireworks, shining out across billions of light-years of space. However, a recent study done at Gemini Observatory shows that they appear to blaze forth from humdrum galaxies in the early universe, and surprisingly, not from the giant or disrupted ones astronomers expected.
According to an international team of astronomers that studied an assortment of these luminous objects near the edge of the observable universe, these pedestrian galactic surroun
Specialist individual music lessons could hugely benefit children with autism, according to researchers Dr Pamela Heaton and Dr Francesca Happe at the University of London. The study, which was funded by ESRC, suggests that many children with this disorder have outstanding abilities in tone recognition. “A lot of work has been done on musical savants with exceptional musical memory and rarely found absolute pitch ability” says Dr Pamela Heaton who led the research. “But our research shows that even c
Scientists have identified what may be a completely new way in which bacteria defend themselves against their hosts. The bacteria have stolen a key defensive gene from the very animals that they are invading – and are now using it against them. This research from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is featured in today’s issue of the open access journal Genome Biology.
EMBL Team Leader Toby Gibson points out that such a discovery has clear medical implications. “This study give
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new technique for drawing maps that could provide a valuable tool for showing human data such as census findings, election results or disease incidence.
The new technique produces cartograms—maps where sizes of areas on the map are in proportion to the population or some other variable, said Mark Newman, assistant professor of physics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Newman wrote a paper on the technique, which
A Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center lung disease specialist reports that some smokers may be genetically predisposed to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Jill Ohar, professor of pulmonology and critical care medicine at Wake Forest Baptist, presented her findings at the 100th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in Orlando, Fla., today (May 25).
In her study, Ohar looked at more than 500 men and women age 40 and older who had smoked 20 ye
Preliminary results of a European Commission-funded study, the SIREN project, presented today at a workshop in Brussels, show that growing insecurity and inequality in Europeans’ work life is contributing to the electoral success of right-wing populist and extremist parties. The study covers eight European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland) and is based on more than 300 interviews and a telephone survey of 5,800 employed persons.
According
Work has started today (May 25th) on the construction of an optical fibre network which will connect five radio telescopes to the giant 76-m Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory, operated by The University of Manchester in rural Cheshire, allowing it to operate with vastly improved sensitivity.
This e-MERLIN network will operate as single radio telescope spanning 217 km, with unprecedented sensitivity provided by the enormous data rates carried by the optical fibres. The combination
Researchers at the University of Warwick have found a way of using some the most difficult waste material from coal mines and quarries that will also significantly reduce the rapid depletion of the world’s best peat resources.
The researchers in the University of Warwick’s horticultural research arm, Warwick HRI, have been able to develop new substitute products from quarry and coal mine waste which can replace some of the 250,000m³ of peat are used each year for growing mushroom
Using a technique that enables them to study both early and advanced stages of arterial plaque buildup in the same mice, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center found that an antioxidant compound found in green tea leaves does not clear established plaque but does inhibit the development of new deposits.
Results of the study are published in the May 25 issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
Several components of green tea leaves are known to have natural pr
Using the zebrafish, a model organism widely used in genetic studies, researchers have found that when it comes to social interactions with other fish, individual zebrafish learn to prefer one fish color pattern over another according to their early experience with these patterns. The work extends the utility of zebrafish to studies of behavior and evolution and is reported by University of Texas researchers Raymond E. Engeszer, Dr. David M. Parichy, and Dr. Michael J. Ryan.
Social behavior
By employing experimental evolution to study the effects of mating within and between different insect populations, researchers have gained insight into the ways in which sexual selection can affect fitness and influence various aspects of evolutionary change.
As a consequence of investigating the short-term fitness consequences of mate choice, researchers had largely come to believe that sexual selection is beneficial. However, conflicts between the sexes are ubiquitous and could erode fitn
Moderate exercise in conjunction with common dietary supplements significantly reduce the risk of atherosclerosis because, combined, they boost the body’s production of nitric oxide, which protects against a variety of cardio-vascular disorders, a new UCLA study led by 1998 Nobel Laureate in medicine Louis J. Ignarro shows.
The study, “Long Term Beneficial Effects of Physical Training and Metabolic Treatment on Atherosclerosis in Hypercholesterolemic Mice,” will be published the week o
Engineering seniors test their invention on high-tech crash dummy
When a car crash occurs, people with osteoporosis and other brittle bone disorders often suffer more serious injuries. To better protect these “fragile” motorists, three Johns Hopkins undergraduate engineering students have devised a harness and vest system that significantly reduced impact forces when tested on a high-tech crash dummy.
The students were responding to a challenge from the Center for Injury Res
Lung transplantation increases the survival of patients with cystic fibrosis by almost 4.5 years on average, according to a study presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference in Orlando on May 24.
“Initially the risks from lung transplantation for cystic fibrosis patients are quite high, but the risk drops over time, and it becomes worth the risk in the long run,” said study co-author Roger D. Yusen, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Pulmona
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